I enjoyed reading The Cassini
Division because it was a reasonably unique view of a possible future and a few
possible future social arrangements. It's not even that the particular
societies pictured are all that likely - a post-capitalist society on Earth
sort of based on the "utopian socialist" communities of the 19th
century, an affluent government-less capitalist society on another planet, and
a post-human / post-singularity society held in check by being in Jupiter's
gravity well. (There is also a poor capitalistic society on Earth made up
of people who refuse to take part in the socialistic society.) Still, it
is an exploration of different paths and some of their consequences.
(Those chapter titles I
recognized were taken from titles of 19th century books. At least some of
those books were meant to be visions of socialist futures, such as William
Morris' "News From Nowhere".)
By the end of the book,
neither of the societies has ended up treated as a straw man to prove one
economic system or the other to be the correct one. Along the road we are
faced with issues of the status of machine-based intelligence, ethical issues
in dealing with potential enemies that may not be real adversaries, etc.
There's the sense of
adventure from the main characters' role as a military defense force. The
main story is their efforts to acquire the information and capability to
determine what real threats exist and to act on them. To accomplish this,
it is necessary to make deals that complicate the process. It is along
this twisting path that we learn about the different societies, the histories
that have led to them and the effects on the characters.
The issues of machine
intelligence play a role throughout the book. The debate over whether
machines, or even human mental patterns copied onto a computer, can truly think
goes back before the advent of the post-human society. Later there were
conflicts between the human and post-human societies. Then there has been
a generations-long broadcasting of virus-infected radio signals from Jupiter
that has left the human society on Earth avoiding all use of radio and
electronic computers. All this has hardened the ideology in the human
defense forces that only organisms can think. Questions about this
ideology hang over the investigation of the newly re-formed post-human society
on Jupiter, and the robots and androids on the capitalist planet. The
book raises interesting questions, but more discerning readers may find the
means by which the questions are answered to be unsatisfying. But that is
a minor point.
.